Tara-Nicholle Nelson

Sometimes, the real estate market can play games with our minds. At the top of the market, home buyers imagine that sellers frolic through fields of cash, rubbing their hands together megalomaniacally as they flip through hundreds of offers, concocting arcane “no brown M&M”-type contract clauses to put the screws to buyers-in-waiting.

At the bottom of the market, the tables turned, and sellers might have visualized buyers sitting on top of truckloads of cash, while deigning to offer them only a paltry few pennies for their Most Precious Asset.

Reality check: neither of these images are anywhere near reality. At the bottom of the market, even the most bargain-hungry buyers are riddled with grave concerns about whether and when to buy, as well as how to get through the maze of tight mortgage and appraisal guidelines. And the opposite is true, too. Even on today’s market – which is much more active than it has been in years – sellers fear making missteps and mistakes that will cause their home to lag or will result in them leaving money on the table, so to speak.

Here are five of the mistakes I see sellers make when the market heats up and buyers start biting – and some tips for avoiding them.